"I'm one of those people, Clarence," Kimball said, with only a slight edge to his voice, "and 1*11 thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head."

"No, you're not," Potter said. "Your deplorable taste in politics aside, you're an intelligent man. Believe me, that makes you stand out from the common herd in the Freedom Party. It makes you stand out from Jake Featherston, too." He held up a hand. "Don't get me wrong-Featherston's not stupid. But he has no more education than you'd expect, and the only thing he's good at is getting up on the stump and making everyone else as angry as he is."

Jack Delamotte took a pull at his whiskey. "I've heard him talk myself now. He even makes me angry, and I'm usually too damn lazy to get mad about anything."

"We need to get angry, dammit," Kimball said. "Too much wrong with this country not to get angry about it. The money's still not worth anything, the damnyankees won't let us have a proper Army and Navy, and half the niggers in the country act like they own it. You can't tell me different. You know damn well it's true."

"Featherston has about as good a chance of solving those problems as the man in the moon," Potter said. "Maybe less."

"Clarence is right," Jack Delamotte said. "He's like one of those nigger preachers. He gets folks all hot and bothered, sure as hell, but you look at what he says and you see he doesn't really say anything at all."

"That's all right," Kimball said placidly. Potter and Delamotte both looked startled. Kimball pointed at the former intelligence officer. "Clarence, the first time we met, you were talking about finding a goal for the CSA and getting people to stick to it. You remember that?"

"Of course I do," Potter said. "It was true then, and it's still true now. It's truer than ever now, because we've drifted longer without a rudder."

Kimball chuckled. "Trying to talk like a Navy man, are you? Well, all right, go ahead. But you know this Featherston character, right?" He waited for Potter to nod, then went on, "Like Jack said, he's awful damn good at riling people up. If he doesn't have any kind of education, so what? So much the better, matter of fact. What do you say we get hold of him and give him the kind of ideas the Confederate States need to get back on their feet?"

"You and me and Clarence, saving the country?" Delamotte didn't just seem dubious; he seemed on the point of laughing out loud.

"Somebody's got to," Roger Kimball answered. He wasn't laughing, not now. "Nobody in Richmond knows how, that's for damn sure. What do you say, Clarence? Will Featherston listen to you?"

Potter rubbed his chin. His gray eyes held uncertainty, something Kimball had rarely seen in them. At last, he said, "I don't know for certain. He hated officers in general, but he didn't hate me in particular, because I did him some good turns. But does that mean we'd be able to steer him the way we want him to go? I'm not sure. I'm not sure he's in the habit of listening to anybody, either. He's as stubborn as they come."

Jack Delamotte looked down into his glass, which was empty. "Easy enough to get on a tiger's back," he observed. "How do you get off again?"

"Oh, we'd manage that," Potter said confidently. "Any of the three of us-even you, Jack, no matter how lackadaisical you let yourself get-is a match for Featherston and then some."

"That's settled, then," Kimball said, though it wasn't, not anywhere close. "We'll get hold of Featherston, fill him full of what we figure he ought to say, and get people to pay attention to what really needs doing." He picked up the whiskey bottle from the table, yanked out the cork, and poured fresh drinks for himself and his friends. They solemnly clinked glasses.

As was his way, Kimball wasted no time trying to make what he planned come true. He'd become a familiar fixture at the Freedom Party offices over on King Street, next to the headquarters of the Washington Light Infantry, a unit that, as its name suggested, had fought in the wars of the CSA and the USA since the Revolution. "No, Commander," a fellow there said from behind a typewriter, "I don't know when Sergeant Featherston will be coming into South Carolina again. It shouldn't be too long, though. With Congressional elections this fall, he'll be doing a deal of traveling, I reckon. We aim to send Richmond a message from all across the country."

"That's fine," Kimball said. "That's mighty fine. Thing is, I'd like to send a message to Sergeant Featherston." Having failed to become an officer, the leader of the Freedom Party took an upside-down pride in his noncommissioned rank. Kimball kept his face carefully straight while referring to it. "I just found out a friend of mine served in the Army of Northern Virginia and got to know him pretty well up there. He'd like to have the chance to say hello."

"A lot of people served in the Army of Northern Virginia," the Freedom Party man said. "I did myself, as a matter of fact. And you'd be surprised how many of them say now that they knew Sergeant Featherston then."

"My friend's name is Potter, Clarence Potter," Kimball said patiently. "He told me the name I should mention is Pompey, that Sergeant Featherston would know what it meant." Quite casually, he set a gold dollar, a tiny little coin, on the desk by the typewriter.

The Freedom Party man licked his lips. A gold dollar could buy a couple of thousand dollars' worth of banknotes these days. He made the coin disappear: not hard when it was so small. "I reckon I can arrange a wire up to Richmond. You're right-I know he'd be glad to hear from an old friend, and especially through Party channels."

Kimball could have sent the telegram himself. But how many telegrams did Jake Featherston get every day? Piles, without a doubt. He'd made himself widely known through the CSA. How many of those telegrams got tossed unread? He'd pay more attention to the ones that came from inside his own outfit.

"Thanks, friend," Kimball said, and headed off to a poker game well pleased with himself. He won, too, which left him even more pleased.

When he strolled back into the Freedom Party headquarters a couple of days later, the fellow who'd pocketed the gold dollar held out a pale yellow telegram. Kimball took it with a confidence that evaporated as he read the message: MAJOR POTTER-

IF YOU CARED ABOUT SEEING ME, YOU COULD HAVE DONE IT A LONG TIME AGO. FEATHERSTON, SGT., 1ST RICHMOND HOWITZERS.

"He knows your friend, I reckon," the Freedom Party man said, "but it doesn't sound like he's real hot to pay him a visit."

"No, it doesn't," Kimball agreed morosely. "Thanks for trying, anyhow." Now that he knew the man took bribes, he might want to pay him off again, which meant not growling at him now.

But what he really wanted to do was get hold of Jake Feather-ston. If Potter's name wasn't the key that fit the lock, he needed one that would. As he left the Freedom Party office, he snapped his fingers. Maybe he knew where to find it.

Since he had no telephone in his flat, he went over to the telephone exchange building and placed a call up to St. Matthews. It took a little while to go through. By now, Anne Colleton's brother was used to Kimball calling, even if he didn't quite accept him. But Anne answered the telephone herself. "Hello, Roger!" she said when she found out who was on the other end of the line. "What can I do for you today?"

Kimball had learned to read her tone of voice. It said, If you 're calling because you want to sleep with me, forget about it. Under other circumstances, that would have angered him. It still did, a little, but he buried that. "What do you think of the Freedom Party?" he asked.

He took her by surprise. There were several seconds of silence up in St. Matthews before she answered, "I haven't really thought much about it one way or the other. It certainly has been making a lot of noise lately, though, hasn't it?" Now she might have been a detective whipping out a magnifying glass. "Why do you want to know?"